Hoppers restaurant

Hoppers second restaurant is a hit!

Getting a table at London’s no reservations restaurants can be a real pain but usually well worth it when it happens. Check out my review of The Barbary to see one recent success. Hoppers is another venue I’d been wanting to try out for months but their Frith Street site was always surrounded by crowds of people wondering whether 2 hours was a reasonable time to wait for a table. I decided not, so went right to the source and visited Sri Lanka instead! Hoppers there are everywhere, even on the breakfast buffet in our hotel and I found I really like them.

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The Barbary

Getting a seat at The Barbary at last

I’m not a fan of the no booking fad that restaurants in London are so keen on.  I’m not a fan of queuing nor of wandering around to find a restaurant that has a table. But The Barbary in Covent Garden has been on my list of ‘must visit’ restaurants for a while now so when I was in the area early one evening for a play at the nearby Donmar Warehouse, I  thought I’d give it a try and hurrah there was space at the bar for 2! Top tip is to arrive at 5.15pm and to do so before Time Out makes it their number one restaurant in London as I fear it will be even more busy now!

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Padron peppers

Tapas lunch at Barrafina, London

Barrafina is a mini-chain of tapas restaurants in London that have claimed a Michelin star for their owners the Hart brothers: Sam and Eddie. Their original site on Dean Street was always hard to get a seat at and has recently relocated inside the nearby  Quo Vadis restaurant so I doubt it’s any easier to get into. However they have other sites and I was looking for a good local lunch to complement an uplifting visit to the British Museum’s Hokusai exhibition when I remembered there was a  Barrafina in Drury Lane. Continue reading

Petersham Nurseries

A top lunch at Petersham Nurseries

I love having a birthday as it’s a great excuse for splendid lunches and being treated by friends!  Petersham Nurseries restaurant has been on my list for ages so I was delighted when my friend suggested it.  Formerly the home of Skye Gyngell where she earned a Michelin star before heading to Somerset House to open Spring.  Still a fine restaurant, it is set in the middle of a beautiful plant nursery. Continue reading

Gillray’s Steakhouse and Bar, London

I’ve been wining and dining and even spa-ing in the County Hall Marriott Hotel for more years than I would like to mention so I was really looking forward to a return visit, especially as I was here to try out the new menu at Gillray’s Steakhouse and Bar! County Hall has a prime site next to the London Eye and across from the Houses of Parliament and fascinating history as the former home of the Greater London Council and its leader Ken Livingstone before it was abolished in 1983. 17 years later he became the first Mayor of London but a new City Hall was built by Tower Bridge so this magnificent building could be taken on by the Marriott group who luckily kept many of the original features such as the wood panelled corridors and bar.

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New favourite London tapas bar: Duende

Seven friends enter a tapas bar, they stare at the menu and ponder the big question: how to chose, how many dishes each, who wants which dish, do we all like the same things? We don’t have all day to make these big decisions. Then it came to us, there was an easy answer – order one of every dish on the menu! Except no one likes oysters so we drop those 3 choices and wait in anticipation for everything else to arrive.
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